


But in the long tresses of your hair I am a babbling brook

by salvabon



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/Comfort, Trans Fox Mulder, binding, some Samantha related angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26739460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvabon/pseuds/salvabon
Summary: When Mulder loses himself in a case, Scully is there to break the fall.
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25
Collections: Trans Mulder Literary Universe





	But in the long tresses of your hair I am a babbling brook

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FlannelGuy51](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlannelGuy51/gifts).



> The title is from Broom People by the Mountain Goats, because it's sad and tender and makes me feel many emotions.  
> This is another attempt at providing more Trans Mulder content, I hope you enjoy it.

Scully knocked on the door of apartment 42.  
"It's open," a familiar voice answered. Mulder was sitting on his couch, still wearing the same clothes from earlier today (or the day before that?). The circles under his eyes were not new but definitely getting worse. There was a hint of scabbing on his right temple, a souvenir from his latest on-foot pursuit of a suspect.  
He was sitting on top of a throw blanket, a bleak reminder to Scully that this was his bed most of the time. Not that he was using it at the moment, she thought.  
He was holding a beige file, most of its contents covering the table.  
"I was thinking, Scully, and I think my initial profile was wrong."  
Scully sighed and sat down on the chair across from him.  
"Mulder, we caught the guy. He is in custody and I am sure that forensics is confirming all the evidence from his apartment right now. Is this really why you called me here at 2am in the morning?"  
Mulder rubbed his eyes. He looked like he hadn't slept in days and Scully knew he hadn’t. She wasn't sure how he did it, the average person needed a certain amount of sleep to function, let alone perform these high-stakes investigations. Then again, Mulder wasn't your average person. He lost himself in the job sometimes and when he was profiling, he seemed to run on nothing but the will to catch the killer. She could see that he was calculating as they spoke, amending his analysis, exploring all angles, getting into the killer's head. But she knew that this talent came at a cost. Yes, he proved again and again that he could work without sleep for unbelievable stretches of time, even work successfully. But to keep up this level of brain function she knew that his body was burning itself up, shutting down everything that wasn't necessary for survival.  
"What if I am wrong?" He said softly. "If there are more victims..." He trailed off. His hands tried to finish the sentence with ambiguous and slightly shaky gestures. She knew why this case had pulled him in like a siren call, why it ate him up. Their killer, the man who she was convinced was already locked away behind bars, targeted young girls. He was fast and efficient, there had been four victims already, and Mulder was sure that had only just been the beginning. She knew from experience that cases like that always awakened something in him, an almost feral need for justice. She had seen it with Roche, when Mulder thought one of the victims might have been his sister. She had seen it earlier, when they were investigating the abduction of young girls by a photographer. Mulder had claimed then that this had nothing to do with his sister, that he was just doing his job, but she knew the truth. Mulder was searching for her and avenging her even when he was not aware he was doing it. His sister’s abduction, alien related or not, has been his driving force since the beginning. And she was afraid it would break him eventually. She just hoped she would be there to prevent it or at the very least break the fall.  
When the first two victims had been found in Chantilly, Virginia, Violent Crimes had asked specifically for Mulder to give his input. They arrived there even before the autopsy was finished, giving Scully the chance to help out - and witness the horrible abuse these girls had gone through before their death. Mulder had accompanied the police to the family of one of the victims.  
When they met again a couple of hour later to compare findings, Mulder had been different. She could not put her finger on it exactly at the time, but it all fell into place when one of the officers told her there had been a boy, the brother of one of the victims. The boy couldn’t have been much older than Mulder when he lost his sister. She had seen him in action many times, joke-cracking conspiracy theorist in one second, brilliant analyst the next. She recognised this difference as if a mental switch had been flipped in his mind, a hyperfixation that would command his brain until the case was over, until he was sure it was over (was it ever over as long as he was still looking for her?). He was scary sometimes when he was like this. She knew that some of her colleagues were scared of him (Spooky Mulder, Scary Mulder) but it wasn’t that. She wasn’t scared of him; She knew he would never hurt her. She was scared for him, scared of what he was doing to himself. This other side of Mulder was testing her understanding of the limits of the human body and psyche.  
And now he was sitting there, in the middle of the night, almost a week after the start of their case. Shivering. Scully reached out to calm his hands and stop him from picking his skin.  
“Mulder…“she whispered, not really knowing what else to say.  
“Take a look at this,” Mulder said and leaned forward to pick up one of the pictures on his desk. He stopped halfway and winced in pain. Scully jumped closer and supported him with his hands.  
“Mulder, what’s wrong?” She triaged him mentally, her hands gently moving over his ribs and stomach through instinct.  
“Is this from the accident earlier, they had a medic take a look at you, right?”  
“It’s not that, it’s nothing, forget about it.” He tried to lean forward again, just to be pushed back by Scully when he moaned in pain.  
She felt the additional fabric under his shirt and cursed under her breath. “Jesus Christ, Mulder, how long have you been wearing your binder?”  
Mulder tried to wave the question away but then she could see the gears in his head turning: “When did we get the call about the second victim?”  
He finally sopped struggling against Scully’s attempt to get him to lean back completely.  
“Mulder, that was four days ago!”  
He shrugged his shoulders, which did nothing to support his point when another wave of pain seemed to roll over his body.  
“I don’t even need to tell you how foolish that was, you know how much strain this puts on your ribs and lungs. And with the fall today-”  
“I usually take it off to sleep, like you told me. I just didn’t-“  
“this isn’t exactly making it better right now.”  
She shook his head in disbelief and carefully helped him up. She could feel the tension his body was keeping up as she leaned against him to support him. She put her arm around him and felt some of that tension breaking as she walked him into the bathroom. His breathing was slightly laboured, and she could feel how cold his skin was.  
Scully made him sit down again and started unbuttoning his shirt. Mulder looked at her like a cat at the vet and she wished that she didn’t have to do this, that he would just take care of himself better. But she knew that on days like these his brain was controlled by this single mission and everything else was secondary. And she knew how bad his dysphoria got sometimes and she imagined that the state he was in right now, the single-minded case-solving machine he turned into, was probably heightening all these negative feelings in his subconscious while suppressing every instinct for self-preservation.  
Carefully she pulled his shirt over his arms and freed him from this first layer of clothing. Mulder looked miserable but compliant until she tried to help him remove the binder.  
“Can you turn off the light?”  
She stopped in her tracks.  
“Mulder, I need to see what I am doing.”  
“Please?” He voice was barely a whisper. Screw it, she would figure out something. She turned off the bathroom light, then opened the door to let in enough light from the outside to allow her to see the bare minimum she needed to work with.  
“Is this okay?”  
He nodded, relief on his face.  
She quickly covered the mirror with a towel as well. This was awful enough for him already, she didn’t want to make it even worse.  
Slowly and carefully she removed the binder for him, trying to get him to stay as still as possible so that he wouldn’t accidentally hurt himself with any quick movements.  
His shoulder muscles were tense, and his entire body seemed to be touch sensitive to the max, with some light bruising and sores around his ribcage. His breathing pattern seemed to return to almost normal levels, although any sort of deep breath still seemed impossible.  
“You’ll be fine, but you should take a hot shower to relax your muscles, I will get you some fresh clothing. Shout if you need help, okay?”  
She touched his shoulder as she turned around and made sure to close the door when she left to give him some privacy and darkness.  
She knew he hated this, but she couldn’t just let him destroy himself like that. She heard the shower turn on just as she started to look for some clean clothing. She picked up some boxer shorts and pants, found a shirt she knew he liked to wear and a sweater by some sports club she didn’t even know he liked. It looked old and was soft in the way old clothing was after being well-loved and worn.  
She knocked on the bathroom door and when she heard an affirmative murmur quickly slipped in to place the clothes there for him.  
A couple of minutes later, Mulder walked out of the bathroom into the half-lit living room. His hair was smoothly clinging to his head, not yet dry. He looked fresher and not quite as miserable anymore, but he was still dragging his feet and not entirely meeting her eyes. He had his arms tightly pressed in front of his chest. Scully could see him taking some healthy deep breaths.  
“Mulder, Chantilly PD just called. They not only found a record-breaking number of forensic evidence at his apartment, he also confessed to the murders.”  
Mulder just stood there now, stopped in his tracks.  
“Mulder, your profile caught the guy. You were right from the start. They wouldn’t have found him without you.”  
Finally, the switch seemed to click. His features softened as he slumped down next to her on the sofa and pulled her into a hug.  
“Thank you, Scully,” he murmured into her hair. He pulled her tighter, as tight as his body allowed him at the moment. She laughed with the relief she felt as she hugged back, feeling his wet hair against her neck. He rested his head on her shoulder as she caressed his head with one free hand, the other caught in the hug, holding him softly but with purpose.  
He was still murmuring something, but she only understood half of it.  
“I really thought I missed something,” he said and then said it again.  
She could feel his warm breath on her skin, now finally calm and deep.  
She didn’t know how long they sat like this, simply accepting each other’s closeness. She listened to his soft murmurs, her hands travelling between his hair and neck in stroking motions. He told her about the victim’s brother, a young boy named Tim, and how they had talked. How he had to promise Tim to find the killer. He told her about the time after Samantha’s abduction, the immediate pain of the aftermath, the investigation, the questions. And the lingering pain when the investigation stopped even though they refused to declare her dead. How, after some time, he started telling people he was an only child. He mentioned high school and Oxford, how he got his first binder in England after years of emergency solutions – tape and sports bras. But eventually he stopped rambling, untangling himself from her with a smile.  
“Felt good to get that off my chest,” he said and then chuckled at his own pun.  
Scully, now slightly damp from the post-shower embrace, pointed at her phone: “I know it’s late, but we should get something to eat. A grown man needs something in his stomach. Pizza?”  
Mulder got up to get a delivery menu from his fridge.  
“Want to share a large mushroom pepperoni pizza?”  
Scully gave him a thumbs up and dialled the number.  
“And after this I’m giving you some ibuprofen and then you’ll get some rest over the weekend, okay? And no binder until Monday. Doctor’s orders.”  
After giving their order to some poor college kid she sat down again, close as before, maybe closer in some way.  
“Scully,” Mulder started and pointed at his outfit: “How did you know this was my dysphoria sweater?”  
Scully arched an eyebrow: “Your what?”  
“You know, the sweater I wear at home when it gets real bad. It just works somehow.”  
She shrugged, brushing against his shoulders: “It just looked like something you’d like to wear now.”  
Mulder shook his head and laughed. His now almost dry hair was moving in all directions at once.  
“Sometimes I think I should have you examined for psychic abilities.”  
Scully rolled her eyes but smiled.  
“You know you look quite handsome with your hair like this,” she ruffled through it, making Mulder laugh once more and shake his head like a wet dog. The delivery guy knocked, at least ten minutes earlier than they counted with him, and they answered the door together, still a little giddy, and tipped generously.  
“Time to celebrate the man of the hour,” Scully said and made a clinking noise when touching their slices of pizza together.


End file.
